E-lectures & podcasts

From my interactions with staff around the university there is a lot in interest in capturing lectures electronically, either live from the classroom or from the desk top using ‘screencast’ software to create short narrated movies which can be presented within VITAL modules etc. Some resources which may be of interest:

Staff in the School of Chemistry and from the eLearning Unit collaborated on an HEA funded technology enhance programme. This project was led by academic staff within Chemistry to look at the benefits and wider adoption of lecture capture within their school. The project team included staff from the Physical Sciences HEA subject centre, a student rep from Chemistry and was supported by Prof. Michael Bradford (ex PVC of learning & teaching) from Manchester University.

The research looked not only at the benefits of electronic lecture capture to support student learning, but to how other staff within the school could be encouraged to adopt the technology. The report concludes that students find lecture capture very supportive to their learning, particularly to enable them to go back over sections of a lecture or difficult concepts they didn’t get the first time, and to support revision for assessment. Interestingly, the use of lecture capture has not resulted in a drop in lecture attendance by students.

If you would like to learn more about lecture capture and podcasts, there are 2 events coming up which might interest you:

‘A focus on’ e-lectures & podcasts workshop, 3rd. March 12.30 to 2PM this is an internal short lunchtime workshop which will introduce you to the benefits, issues and practical skills to create e-lectures & podcasts and present them within VITAL. This works will include how to create a basic narrated PowerPoint, narrated screen capture movies using CamStudio and audio podcasts using the podcast tool within VITAL.

‘It’s not about recording lectures’ is a day workshop run by the national Media Enhanced Learning Special Interest Group (MELSIG) which will be on the 1st. April at Liverpool John Moores University. This is a good event if you want to find out how others are using this type of technology in HE.

Resources on e-lectures & podcasts

The MELSIG wiki has some very good resources and ideas for using this type of technology – ‘how to guides’ and a great section titled ‘100+ ideas for podcasting!’